ahmad: The reason being that your items may be housed in different warehouses across the country and they aren't going to combine them into a single shipment for you in that case.

It doesn't even seem to require that for Amazon to ship in separate shipments.

I bought a couple of pairs of shoes from myhabit, which is a shop run by Amazon, the two items were shipped from what appeared to be the same warehouse (the tracking shows them leaving from the same town at the exact same time). My shoes were sent as two separate packages.

My last one arrived, it was a pcie card in a PCIe card sized box, In about a cubic foot of box with loads of padding around it. Not as bad as the sim card I got from DSE when 2 degrees launched, but pretty close.

$45ish of youshop ate any savings.

Its just too risky to get small things that require double boxing since amazon dont seem to care about volume when its going free super saver shipping.

Ouch, so I got stung with the volumetric weight which was double the actual weight so instead of $35 it was $55 and it is going to take 2 weeks to get to me. It does state this about the volumetric weight, but just wasn't aware and 2 weeks from America to NZ? I pay 2-3US for ebay items from China to NZ that are here within a week.

Distorter: Ouch, so I got stung with the volumetric weight which was double the actual weight so instead of $35 it was $55 and it is going to take 2 weeks to get to me. It does state this about the volumetric weight, but just wasn't aware and 2 weeks from America to NZ? I pay 2-3US for ebay items from China to NZ that are here within a week.

edit: This was for a pair of shoes and 2 t-shirts.

They say two weeks to be safe, it's usually ~5-7 days (in my experience)

antoniosk: Is there an annual limit on goods you can import for private use?

Just thinking if you're continously importing goods between $100/200 value, it will soon add up.... but I can't find anything on the Customs or IRD website

As I understand, the threshold applied is simply due to Custom's discretion, it's not worth them collecting, so they exercise discretion not to collect, but there is nothing to say they can't.

So no there is no specific "limit" to the number of items from overseas you can import personally, if you are legitimately importing stuff for your own purposes (not resale) and not actively trying to avoid customs fees by getting packages split up and sent to you separately, you are most unlikely to be pinged for low value packages.

However, if you get 500 packages each valued at $50 all from the same place on the same day, customs are probably going to notice that pretty quickly and exercise their discretion to combine them for the valuation and send you a bill :-)

Day 8: The item gets an NZ tracking number, but is listed as "Not yet tracked" in their system. I'm assuming this means it has entered NZ but is awaiting customs?

Can also mean it's about to turn up at your door.

Tracking when it comes to NZ Post is a hit and miss affair, even if you pay for tracking, they might or might not actually scan the parcels.

I sometimes get tracked items from deep dark mainland China, full tracking right up to "Arrived in Auckland" when it hits customs, from then it seems to depend on what mood the NZ Post staff are in as to if there are any further tracking updates or if it just magically arrives at my door a couple days later.

ah yes, i didn't think it will be shipped as a single parcel. duh. i question the savings with this multiple parcel discount.

(1) if you have three parcels and they are going to place it into a single box and assuming they use volumetric weight to charge, you are unlikely to find a box that will fit three parcels snugly. it will probably be an ill-fitting box with spaces/gaps which will increase the volumetric weight.

(2) if it's 3 invoices + shipping charge, you are probably more likely (than if you shipped each parcel individually) be over and above the customs $60 threshold.